Monday, August 31, 2009

The second and third of my trio of circular-yoke baby sweaters are finally finished, and I'll be posting the pattern pronto! But first, a moment for boasting.

I am so excited about the technique I hit upon for working the yoke of this seemingly "fair isle" sweater. It achieves quite complicated, one-row color changes (whereas mosaic knitting requires pairs of two rows each), but without ever having to knit with two colors at once!

I am sure I am not the first person to have thought of this, but I did some poking around the internet and couldn't find any other examples. It's so simple, and yet so cool! If you're wondering how it works, check out the Purl Bee's Treeline Cardigan, which exploits the fact that circular needles have two working ends all the time to achieve one-row stripes in flat knitting. That's what got me thinking about how one could work one-row fair isle patterns, slipping stitches as if to work mosaic knitting, but instead of turning the work and purling back and slipping the same stitches, pushing the work to the right and knitting over the same row with the second color! It only works for patterns that have no more than three stitches in a row of one color, but it's an awesome trick! Now I want to use it as often as I can.

Anyway, be on the lookout for the pattern later this afternoon. Yay!

Actually, first a question, though: I am bundling them and selling them as one unit, with a price significantly cheaper than if I sold each individually. But would you want them also sold individually?